Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Embyr tends her tavern
while keeping her dangerous parentage a secret, until she's attacked by a
hellhound and saved by one of the most feared men in history.

For the last eight hundred years, Ryder McLennon, the infamous leader of
Death's Horsemen, has used his army to hunt the vampire who killed his wife.
He's earned a reputation as a murderous madman. But in Embyr, he discovers
something that could turn the tide of battle in his favor. Her control over
fire can reduce an enemy to ash and her flippant disregard of him heats his
blood in ways no one else ever has. She's beautiful, powerful and completely
different from her violence-loving brethren.

Embyr finds herself thrust into a war she wants no part of, targeted by a
vicious vampire because of her cooperation with Ryder. As she learns to wield
her demonic powers without letting the madness of her race overcome her, she
also has to fight her attraction to a killer bent on her seduction.

Which is your favorite to write: Heroes or villains?

When it
comes to the question of writing heroes or villains, that’s very hard to
answer. Likely because I try to give all of my characters the same treatment. I
have a rather extensive character questionnaire that I fill out for each one,
whether it’s a main or supporting character. Not all of that information makes
it into the book, but it breathes life into them for me.

But for
the sake of answering the question, I would have to go with heroes. While
villains are extremely interesting to me, writing a hero is the real challenge
and excitement for me. I try to make sure that each of my characters comes from
a real place, so it’s always interesting to me why the hero chose the route he
or she did.

I don’t
ever want my heroes to be perfect. Perfect heroes are boring heroes, in my
opinion. They’re going to have flaws, they’re going to doubt, to make mistakes.
What I love discovering is what keeps them on the hero path, how they deal with
it when they make the wrong choice or when faced with something that isn’t very
heroic.

It’s
easy to be bad. It’s not so easy to be flawed, to be broken, and still be a
hero.

About the Author:

Brittany Pate lives in Texas with her husband and son. She is a
longtime lover of all things fantasy and romance. When she isn’t writing, she
enjoys narrating audio books and drinking entirely too much coffee.

When the frost came, clinging murderously to every leaf and blade of grass, Cassandra was not surprised. Others viewed the carnage and bewailed the death of their summer gardens, muttering about climate change, but she knew better. For days now she had felt it coming. Her joints ached and she saw ice in her mind’s eye; glittering stalactites dripped into her field of vision, growing more persistent as the days passed. Ignoring the scoffing glances of her neighbours, she had carried the few potted plants she had not already killed off indoors where they would be protected from the coming chill.

Cassandra gazed out of the window at the frost-bitten world beyond her ground-floor flat. The summer sun had reached its peak, its rays warm even through the glass, yet strangely it was not enough. The frost gripped its victims still, refusing to budge, refusing to surrender. It stayed within her mind too, bringing a vague, pulsing chill to her bones. She crossed her arms and retreated to her reading chair, flopping down onto the cushions and hugging one tightly to her chest. It will pass, she told herself over and over.

For as long as she could remember she had had an uncanny ability to sense things before they happened. As a child, she would announce suddenly at dinner that it would rain in the morning, even though the weather report had just predicted a fine day. Or she would inform her frantic mother that the missing mobile phone was in the glove box and not in the house at all. It had freaked out her parents when she was small, but her grandmother had always winked at her and called it a gift, before launching into another of her famous tales of fairies and magic, gods and giants. Usually the message Cassandra received was fleeting—a flash of an image or a vague sensation in her mind, gone as quickly as it had arrived—but not this time. No, this time it lingered, icy tentacles wrapping around her, passing back and forth before her eyes. Tomorrow I’ll be fine again. Tomorrow when the frost clears.

Of Gods and Giants: Writing the ‘Other’ in Fantasy Fiction

Nicki J Markus

One of the great challenges in fantasy writing is to find a way to represent non-human figures so they maintain their alien qualities while also being recognisable and believable to readers. There are a number of ways writers can approach this. It can be accomplished through the character’s appearance, mannerisms, mode of speech, beliefs and values, and in the way they dress. I have tried to employ all these techniques in my new book The Ragnarök Chronicles in the hope of creating characters that are realistic to readers but retain their quality of being ‘other’.

All my mythological characters speak differently from the modern day humans. They never contract words and their language and sentence structure is more archaic to give an impression of their age and the fact English is not their native language. The different races of the nine realms have different styles of dress, reflecting their respective cultures and ways of life. Their appearances too are diverse. The two groups of giants have visages that relate to the realms in which they dwell, while all the gods are handsome beyond compare.

All these elements set them apart from the humans, and yet their motivations remain deeply familiar—love, hate, jealousy, lust, a desire for power, and the will to survive—because fantasy fiction is not just about strange new worlds and beings, it is, at its heart, a reflection of our own world, and the characters need to show that in order to engage the reader.

So let me invite you all to my world of gods, giants, and ancient prophecies. I hope you will enjoy the journey.

Giveaway

Prizes: 3 x eCopy of The Ragnarok Chronicles and Swag signed by Nicki J. Markus

About the author

Nicki J Markus was born in England in 1982, but now lives in Adelaide, South Australia with her husband. She has loved both reading and writing from a young age and is also a keen linguist.
Nicki launched her writing career in 2011. She published works through Wicked Nights Publishing and Silver Publishing before both companies closed their doors. She is now self-publishing some of her works.
Nicki also writes M/M fiction under the alternate pen name of Asta Idonea and has had several short stories published by Wayward Ink Publishing.
Nicki works as a freelance editor and proofreader and in her spare time enjoys: music, theatre, cinema, photography, sketching, history, folklore and mythology, pen-palling, and travel.Social media links
Blog: http://www.nickijmarkus.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NickiJMarkus
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NickiJMarkus
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolamarkus
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4567057.Nicki_J_Markus